Mashable: It's not all bad as Gates praised Musk for his EV efforts and feels that Musk will be a great mega philanthropist someday.

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, mocked Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos by saying he would rather pay for vaccines than travel to Mars. He also noted that funding "space travel" is not the best use of one's resources.

Both Bill Gates and Elon Musk are among the world's wealthiest individuals, but that doesn't mean they agree with one another. The two have had public disagreements before, and now the ex-Microsoft CEO is criticising Musk's plans to send missions to and colonise Mars by stating he would rather spend his money on vaccines.

Gates was asked by BBC journalist Amol Rajan whether or not sending humans to Mars was a wise use of resources. "It is actually quite expensive to go to Mars." "You can buy measles vaccines and save lives for $1,000 per life saved," he said. So that's simply a reality check, in the sense of 'don't travel to Mars', he continued.

Though Gates's fellow billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson also have space exploration companies (Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, respectively), his answer appears to be directed mostly at Elon Musk, with whom he has had conflicts in the past.

Through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he co-founded with his ex-wife Melinda, Gates has invested billions of dollars in vaccine development and delivery around the world. In the year 2020, he voiced his disapproval of the US government's approach to the coronavirus, claiming that action had not been taken swiftly enough to prevent a shutdown. As part of the effort to be ready for the next pandemic, he has also advocated for the establishment of a Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization (GERM) team with an annual budget of $1 billion.

Some conspiracy theorists, seeing Gates' preoccupation with vaccines and the COVID-19 virus, have suggested that he may have caused the outbreak, that he is using vaccinations as a means of tracking individuals, or that he stands to benefit from the epidemic. Bill says that he was surprised to know about these conspiracies and wittily stated that "malevolence is a lot easier to understand than biology."

There were some good things that Gates had to say about Musk. In response to whether he would recommend that Twitter's owner join the "club of megaphilanthropists," Gates stated, "Yeah, I think someday he'll be a terrific philanthropist." "It's obvious that even without intending to, things like Tesla are having a positive impact."